Category: Favourites

  • Cognitive Fitness: Pain Is Inevitable. How to Alleviate It and Use It to Your Advantage

    Anil Rajput

    Some books just happen to me, this is one of those. It found me. I really liked the framing – cognitive fitness. An analogy based on physical fitness. If I had to sum it all up, I’d say this is a scientific (with a little bit of philosophy) take on mindfulness. Though I am not sure that word is even used once, in the book. In the author’s words, “cognitive fitness is the leadership that holds perceptions, thoughts, emotions, actions, motivations, imagination, and illusory intelligence in such a way that suffering is minimal and happiness is possible.“

    Indeed, as with the Buddha, Anil Rajput is also of the opinion that pain is inevitable. As the second part of the title states, the idea is to alleviate it, and even use it to our advantage. It is interesting that an obsessive desire for pleasure, or an inability to endure pain, are both conducive to pain, not pleasure. Also, the absence of pain is not enough for happiness.

    The book has seven chapters which goes into several related areas. In the first chapter, the author points out the purpose of pain and pleasure – both pain and pleasure are feedback mechanisms, and they aren’t really our end goals, though we don’t always perceive it that way. In general pain motivates you to think, act, and solve a problem, while pleasure tells you that you’re on the right path. This feedback can be flawed too, for instance, the instant pleasure of drug abuse actually creates long term pain! This chapter also brings up the complexity of individual, social, and natural aspects of life, as well as nihilism and its inherent contradiction.

    The second chapter shifts focus to our bounded brain and its component parts, pitched against the world of infinite information it can never completely grasp. And thus, the inevitability of illusions and ignorance, including ones in perception, cognition, and emotion that emerge from the imperfect information processing of the neural circuits. We fill in details where we don’t have any, and our ignorance also makes us overconfident. He points out how animals never commit suicide. Our evolution beyond survival seems to have given us this unique concept.

    The third chapter is about the psychology of pain and pleasure, the deception of our own emotions, and how pain can be actually used to get clarity. This chapter has a very interesting portion on the life cycle of pleasure – desire (wanting) that might lead to happiness (if we end up liking what we desired – we need not), and how that happiness decreases over time due to habituation and might even disappear, which then leads to the next desire. The hedonistic treadmill. “Desire is wanting, not liking, and that makes all the difference.“

    Psychological pain is an indication that our subjective map of the world needs a revision. The good news is that the brain does have a powerful cognitive immune system, which reduces the effects of suffering – self-affirmation, self-deception, positive illusions, dissonance reduction and defence mechanisms. But it is interesting that the brain focuses more on negatives than positives -because it was essential to save us in the early days of humanity, as compared to say, the pleasure of say, a better mate. We could always have the latter later!

    The important point raised in this chapter is how the ability to endure pain is a requirement to minimise it! Think of it exactly like the muscle you exercise, so as to strengthen it. Except, you wouldn’t go looking for pain, but enduring it and learning from it when it appears is important. The key antidotes to pain are hope, equanimity and courage, which take us away from the fear and panic that lies behind the pain. When we think coolly, we realise that from a survival perspective, the latter is needed only in a physical fight or flight. The rest is emotional, and we can learn to manage it.

    Chapter 4 is about how the brain can be its own worst enemy, and we need to be able to control it to some extent to flourish. This chapter has an interesting portion on conditioning – classic, which is a response to a stimulus (a soldier who returns from war has anxiety when hearing a helicopter even within a safe city) and operant, which is learned by punishment and reward (kid being rewarded for good behaviour). We also learn from observation, and it can be implicit or explicit.

    This chapter also points out how the sub-conscious brain is built for speed and is therefore also prone to wrong judgment. Interesting that our memory can be implicit or explicit. The former is the collection of procedural memory (cognitive and motor skills) and priming (perception enhanced by stimulus). Explicit memory is divided into episodic memory (your experiences) and semantic memory (your knowledge). We make our maps of the world early – a subjective, simple and limited map of the objective, complex and infinite universe. A map critical to make sense of the world. But many times, we find it difficult to change in the face of a challenge, and facts supporting it.

    The next chapter is about the psychology of physical action, the efficiency of cognitive action, and the importance of a subjective purpose and meaning, which motivates us to face the chaos and uncertainties. This also prevents our emotions being hijacked by fear and panic. In this context, it is interesting that rewards are of two kinds – consummatory (moment) and incentive (better future). It is also interesting that when mechanical skills are required, thinking about the reward betters performance, whereas when cognitive skills are required, that thinking might derail us. This is especially so because in many cases, the rewards are not completely in our hands. Only the effort is.

    Chapter 6 is about the importance of focus and how meditation can help. And the final chapter is about how knowledge acquisition on a regular basis is the first step to taking some amount of control over all this.

    As he rightly points out, “we live in a socioeconomic world with a biological body, among other known and unknown things, and problem in our life can be because of multiple factors in multiple domains, many of which may or may not be in our direct or indirect control.” And that is why cognitive fitness is important.

    I really liked ‘the book Cognitive Fitness for the material and perspectives it contains. However, I do think, it could have done with a better editor. That doesn’t take away from the content though. It’s in my long list of 2023’s favourite reads.

    Cognitive Fitness by Anil Rajput

  • Status & Culture: How Our Desire for Social Rank Creates Taste, Identity, Art, Fashion, and Constant Change

    W. David Marx

    I love it when a book matches the expectations set by the cover. In this case, a very intriguing “how our desire for social rank creates taste, identity, art, fashion, and constant change”. As GenX , and a marketer, I have often tried to make sense of the changing nature of culture courtesy the effects of the internet. This book is extremely insightful as it navigates what culture is, how it gets fashioned, and then, how it has changed in the last couple of decades.

    The premise is that beyond functionality and pleasures, most things we do is for status-seeking. And this sparks creativity, which in turn, creates culture. David Marx uses a bunch of sciences, including anthropology, neuroscience, economics, philosophy and meshes them with art history, and media studies to answer why things become popular, why that changes over time, and how it shapes our identity and our behaviour.

    The book is divided into four parts, beginning with understanding status, conventions, signalling, and how this relates to taste, authenticity and identity. It then delves into classes and sensibilities, subcultures and countercultures, how status-seeking feeds creativity, and fuels culture, and its changes. Further, it uses fashion cycles as a means to understand how cultural changes happen, and the role of mass media in it. This section also studies the part that history plays in shaping culture, and how frequent blasts of ‘retro’ are inevitable. All of this puts us in a great place to understand what the internet age has done to culture, and some direction on what is ahead.

    I found the book engaging and accessible, and very useful in understanding my own behaviour and ‘tastes’, as well as that of people I know, and society at large. Highly recommended.

    Notes
    1. The Beatles mop top haircut’s origin story is Stu Sutcliffe’s (the original bass guitarist of the Beatles) German girlfriend trying to imitate the French mode, which was becoming popular among the local art boys. After their reluctant conversion, it became their signature, and a global trend!
    2. Status denotes a specific position in the social hierarchy. Every status comes with specific rights and duties, the most desirable benefits coming to those at the top (more attention and rewards, deference, access to scarce resources, dominance – make others do things against their wishes). Status is bestowed by others, it is social. Status is contextual – local, global. And it is zero-sum, when one gains, someone else has to lose.
    3. Achievements get embodied in particular forms of capital – political, educational, economic, social. This capital determines our memberships in different groups.
    4. Different status levels have different conventions. At first conventions of social interactions regulate behaviour at a conscious level, then we internalise them and they become habits. And then they set our perceptual framework for observing the world, and our expectations. Our sense of meaning and order. Lifestyle is thus a requirement of social rank and an expression of it.
    5. Just as we internalise conventions, status value acts on our brains at a subconscious level. Conventions with high status value appear to us as beautiful, and vice versa. But we attribute this liking to other things like practicality, cost, sentimental value or just personal preferences. (vacations)
    6. The moral duty of self actualisation is a status duty – individuals at the top of the hierarchy must pursue unique behaviours and distinctive choices.
    7. Status symbols are a signal that allow a quick reading of and by others. But they offer alibis (quality, aesthetic features etc) so it is not just a symbol.
    8. There are five signalling costs – money, time (PhD), exclusive access, cultural capital (knowledge of conventions by spending time among high status), norm breaking
    9. Taste, as reflected by multiple signals, is how status appraisals happen. To have good taste means making better choices than others.
    10. Lifestyle choices must reveal congruence – an internal consistency with the target sensibility. Deep knowledge opens the door to better taste, and congruence reveals our commitment to high status sensibility. The highest status people make distinctive choices through bounded originality.
    11. In signalling, we build personas – observable packages of signals, taste, sensibility, immutable characters and cues absorbed from our upbringing and background. Others use this persona to determine our identity. And we have a ‘self’, known only to us.
    12. Our ‘cultural DNA’ = hidden elements, immutable characters and cues, conventions for normal status, emulations (of higher status) and individual distinctions
    13. iPod won as a status symbol, though Microsoft Zune had better features
    14. Old Money taste focuses on patina, visual proof of age in their possessions (vintage) They uses this as an advantage over New Money.
    15. The professional class (70s onward) built a balance of economic, social and cultural capital. Impressing old money and embarrassing new money’s ‘loud’ tastes
    16. New Money’s use of economic capital in signalling spurs the creation of expensive luxury goods – sports cars, summer homes, designer clothes etc. Old Money’s countersignalling and focus on patina and cultural capital get companies to make classic, modest goods with functional appeal. The professional class’s signalling through information creates a market for middlebrow/consumer media guides, functional goods, artisanal goods, and copies of Old Money lifestyles. Underprivileged individuals’ desire to be part of culture outdo peers pushes companies to offer kitsch and flashy entry-level consumer goods.
    17. Immanuel Kant a sorted 3 authoritative criteria for artistic genius – the creation of fiercely original works, which over time become imitated as exemplars, and are created through mysterious and seemingly inimitable methods.
    18. Individuals make adoption decisions within the framework of human interaction. They consider how when and from whom they receive information, how they view uncertainty about switching and how they will be judged in the community for making the switch This creates five distinct groups, innovators, early adopters, early majority, let majority and laggards. The diffusion process – high status adoption of new convention for distinction, early adopters’ embrace of that convention as emulation of their status superiors, early majority reinvention and simplification to follow an emerging social norm, late majority imitation to avoid losing normal status , laggards’ passive adoption without intention
    19. Elite flock to three particular categories of items that fulfil their needs. Rarities, novelties and technology innovations.
    20. Four related phenomena, in the internet age – the explosion of content, the clash of maximalist and minimalist sensibilities accompanying the rising global wealth, the rejection of taste as a legitimate means of distinction, the over evaluation of the past in Gen X’s retromania and the abandoning of the past in Gen Z’s Neomania.
    21. “You can’t just walk around and be visible on the internet for anyone to see you. You have to act and the main purpose of this communication is to make yourself look good.” Social media also enables us to quantify our status like never before in like retreats comments and followers.
    22. Before the internet, elites could protect their status symbols behind information barriers and exclusive access to products. The internet broke that.
    23. Another elite group has stepped in to countersignal gauche extravagance, the professional class tech billionaires who are forming their own taste culture. They created wealth without shedding their professional class habitus. Skeptic of glamour and respect for thoughtful thrift, they make their choices based on functional rationales rather than the open pursuit of status symbols.
    24. Omnivorism (consume and like everything) has had major effects on culture over the last few decades. In the past taste worked as a decision classifier by drawing clear lines between social groups. Omnivorism drains this power by declaring nearly everything suitable for consumption.
    25. Collectively reaching the stage of meta knowledge we come to understand the arbitrariness of our own preferences taste and culture. The proclaimed superiority of preferred styles over others is accordingly and arrogant and bigoted act.
    26. Omnivore tastes then can be used to dismantle the status structures that prevent the equitable distribution of respect. In a world of celebrity wealth-gospel, and millennial financial anxiety, young entertainers face little backlash for aggressively courting likes, subscribers and advertisers. Follower counts and gross earning appear to be the only relevant sign of cultural import.
    27. Youth find ‘self expression by enlisting in a global army (e.g. BTS)
    28. Hysteresis – the lingering values of a previous age continuing to guide our judgments

    Status & Culture

  • The Coincidence Plot

    Anil Menon

    Not often in the fiction genre does one find a novel that is challenging and entertaining. The fact that I did not buy this book (D did) is a coincidence that does seem very meta. I absolutely loved The Coincidence Plot – its explorations of philosophy, the layering of its plots and characters, and the fantastic conversations that they have with each other, and sometimes, themselves.

    The book is a wandering of sorts, centred around coincidences and the kind of God that exists in such a world. If that smells like Spinoza, it’s not a coincidence. The plots, subplots, and characters are all built around this theme. Starting with Artur, a mathematician escaping Nazi Germany and working on Spinoza’s thesis after his work on the uncertainty of mathematical proofs remains unfinished, to two characters working on novels to bring to existence this mathematician’s life and thoughts – “ontological proof for the existence of God”. In case I made it out to be a mind-numbing philosophy grind, it isn’t. The characters and interesting, and well-written, and so are their relationships.

    It’s definitely not the standard linear book. Each chapter has two characters from a finite set, but placed across different geographical settings and time periods. As we go along, the parallels are unmistakeable, and that is not a coincidence. Anil Menon seems to know a bunch of things about a bunch of things. It allows him to create layers and depths, and when you combine that with the twin powers of a fantastic sense of humour, and a poignant sensitivity and empathy towards grief and the human condition in general, it creates a marvel. Sometimes preposterous, sometimes profound, this has been one of my favourite fiction reads in a while!

    This is in my Bibliofiles 2023 long list.

  • The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World

    Iain McGilchrist

    As is the case most of the time these days, I discovered The Master and His Emissary thanks to a podcast. Iain McGilchrist’s concepts seemed extremely intriguing, and now I have to admit (as he mentions early in the book) maybe intuitively consistent with my lived experience, and I had to read the book soon. Turns out that it goes directly to my all-time favourites, and was in my Bibliofiles 2023 list.

    As the subtitle suggests, the book is divided into two parts – the divided brain, and the making of the Western World, each with half a dozen chapters. The first part deals with the brain itself – the asymmetry of the right and left hemispheres, their collective and individual roles, how their functioning actually leads to different perspectives, how this affected the evolution of music and then language (which can be seen as a key component in the progression of the species), the primacy of the right hemisphere, and how its emissary – the left hemisphere – has now usurped control.

    The heuristic ways of looking at the hemispheres, e.g. left analytical, right creative etc, is replaced by a nuanced view. The differences between them are less about what they do and more about how they approach something. The left’s utilitarian ability to ‘grasp’ (look at how the metaphor applies to thoughts), its ability to provide simple answers and articulate them well, have all enabled it to grab control at an accelerated pace since the Industrial Revolution, and create a world where it prizes precisely these capabilities in individuals, institutions, and culture at large.

    This is in many ways opposed to the right, which takes more holistic views, understands ideas and metaphors, perceives emotions better, specialises in non-verbal communication, and is humble about what it knows. The right deals with whatever is implicit, the left is tied to more explicit and more conscious processing. The right is present and pays attention to the world outside, the left re-presents. We need both hemispheres, and the right knows it, but the left thinks it knows everything. The left creates a world, and when it stops communications with the right, will not even accept reality if it counters the ‘truth’ of the world it has created. Its role was to provide a map of reality, it now thinks the map is reality, and if not, it will remake reality to fit the map.

    The second part then digs into how this has manifested in the world around. It begins with the concept of mimesis (my favourite part) and how it was the crux of our leap into what we now call culture. The meta-skill that enables all other skills – imitation – possibly explains the rapid expansion of the brain in early hominids. Through the next five chapters, Iain takes us through history – from the early Greeks to the post-modern world, and how, though history has seen a see-saw in terms of the dominance of the hemispheres – Renaissance, Reformation, Enlightenment, Romanticism, and the Industrial Revolution – the impact of the last one was such that we are now in a world where a swing towards the right seems near impossible. Much like an addict, who is not even conscious that his next dose is not just another dose. ‘There is a vicious cycle between feelings of boredom, emptiness and restlessness, on the one hand, and gross stimulation and sensationalism on the other’.

    The research is deep, in both sections, as evidenced by over a hundred pages of notes and bibliography. I especially appreciated the decision of not having same-page notes – it really does help the flow of reading. Iain has painstakingly tried to make a large number of diverse topics as accessible as possible. The first half is based on conclusions from scientific research and experiments across history, and various domains. The second half is itself an accordion of topics across centuries – arts, music, politics, language, and everything we call culture.

    I think my bias for this book and its argument is based on my own experience. As a person and a professional who has to balance both hemispheres, I have been pulled to the left for the longest while. And in many workshops, the recommendation to me has been to let my right side ‘play’. It is only very recently that I have been able to start doing that, and I have to say that I am much happier. The Master and His Emissaryis a book I hugely recommend. It is not the easiest of reads, and I deliberately slowed down my reading speed so as to not gloss over it (though I still did in some of the arts discussions!) but it will open up how you think – the narrative you have made about yourself, and the world around you.

    Quotes and ideas from The Master and His Emissary
    There are four main pathways to truth – science, reason, intuition, and imagination
    “The question is not what you look at, but what you see” ~ Henry Thoreau
    Attention changes what kind of thing comes into being for us : in that way it changes the world. Whether they are humans (say, employer vs friend) or things – a mountain is landmark to a navigator, a source of wealth to the prospector, and a dwelling place of gods for another. There is no ‘real’ mountain which can be distinguished from these, no one way of thinking which reveals the true mountain.
    Manipulospatial abilities may have provided the basis for primitive language. Function gestures become manipulative, syntax developed to form language, expression of our will. (p 111) Even in left handers, grasping actions controlled by left hemisphere, thus right hand.
    Language’s origin in music. Language originates as an embodied expression of emotion, that is communicated by one individual ‘inhabiting’ the emotional world of the other. A process that could have been derived from music. Grooming – music – language, all picked up by imitation. (p 123)
    Adam Zeman’s three principal meanings of consciousness – as a waking state, as experience, as mind (p 187)
    The river is not only passing across the landscape, but entering into it and changing it too, as the landscape has ‘changed’ and yet not changed the water. The landscape cannot make the river. It does not try to put a river together. It does not even say ‘yes’ to the river. It merely says ‘no’ to the water – or does not say ‘no’ to the water, whatever that it is that it does so, it allows the river to come into being. The river does not exist before the encounter. Only water exists before the encounter, and the river actually comes into benign the process of encountering the landscape, with its power to say ‘no’ or not to say ‘no’.
    The idea that the ‘separation’ of the two hemispheres took place in Homeric Greece. (voices of gods) (p260 -275)
    Gnothi seauton – know thyself
    In sooth I know not why I am so sad,
    It wearies me, you say it wearies you;
    But how I caught it, found it, or came by it,
    What stuff ’tis made of, whereof it is born,
    I am to learn.
    ~ Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice
    The difference between reason and rationality. The former depends on seeing in things in context – right hemisphere. Latter is left, context-independent.
    Kant described marriage as an agreement between two people as to the ‘reciprocal use of each others’ sexual organs’
    ‘Life is a progress from want to want, not from enjoyment to enjoyment’ ~ Sam Johnson
    Modern consumers everywhere are in a ‘permanent state of unfulfilled desire’
    Certainty is the greatest of all illusions: whatever kind of a fundamentalism it may underwrite, that of religion or of science, it is what the ancients meant by hubris.

    The Master and His Emissary

  • From Strength to Strength

    Arthur C. Brooks

    Quite a few of Arthur C. Brooks’ columns have resonated with me and also been thought-starters for some of my blog posts, so I was looking forward to ‘From Strength to Strength’. The premise is that in the first half of their lives, (most) people single-mindedly strive to be successful, often at the cost of health, relationships etc. But with age, many of the abilities that made them successful start to decline. They resent and resist this, leading to frustration and dissatisfaction. The book is about navigating the second half of one’s life when there are changes in mind and body, and the rules by which one worked and lived no longer seem to make sense. How does one get through this liminality, and thrive?

    The book begins with one of his articles I had particularly liked – Your Professional Decline is Coming. I found this chapter very interesting thanks to the concepts that appear in it. For instance, “the principle of psychoprofessional gravitation”, the idea that the agony of decline is directly related to prestige previously achieved, and to one’s emotional attachment to that prestige. Also, the two kinds of intelligence – fluid intelligence, defined as the ability to reason, think flexibly, and solve novel problems, and crystallised intelligence, the ability to use a stock of knowledge learned in the past. The former is high in early adulthood, and starts to diminish in the thirties and forties. The latter starts growing from then on. Simplistically put, intelligence, and wisdom. The trick is to jump off from the first curve and on to the second in the later stages of life.

    The book then moves on to how we objectify ourselves at work, and are addicted to the success it brings, making the jump to the second curve difficult. Many things are involved – pride, fear, social comparison, and a loss aversion that focuses on well, losing things like wealth, power, and fame one has amassed through hard work.

    The rest of the book offers perspectives on how to get off the treadmill – mindfulness, finding friends and meaningful relationships, focusing on companionate love in marriage (rather than passionate love), facing one’s fear of death, distinguishing between intrinsic and extrinsic goals and focusing on the former, starting vanaprastha and understanding how to detach, finding a faith. I found this part not entirely different from things I have read in other books. I think I expected a bit more, but on hindsight, that’s an unfair expectation, since this is something one has to figure out independently, books and other people can only offer perspectives.

    Having said that, ‘From Strength to Strength’ is a great start if you’re feeling the waves of midlife hit you. It provides context and perspectives to help you start framing the second half of life.

    Notes
    Fear of death: “thanatophobia.”Whether paralyzing or mild, the fear of death has eight distinct dimensions: fear of being destroyed, fear of the dying process, fear of the dead, fear for significant others, fear of the unknown, fear of conscious death, fear for body after death. and fear of premature death.
    Edsel problem: The famous car that Ford executives loved, but consumers hated. They sell what *they* like, instead of what the consumers wants and needs. (in the context of helping people at our convenience and in our way)
    “The worst thing about death is the fact that when a man is dead it is impossible any longer to undo the harm you have done him, or to do the good you haven’t done him.They say: live in such a way as to be always ready to die. I would say: live in such a way that anyone can die without you having anything to regret.” Leo Tolstoy

    From Strength to Strength